


No Light, No Love

by tactfulGnostalgic



Series: The Sun We Know [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, club setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9085378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tactfulGnostalgic/pseuds/tactfulGnostalgic
Summary: You're smart enough to know you won't meet her again. No name, no number, no knowledge of anything about her - the chances are astronomical. And you come to peace with that, sitting in the back of a taxi, watching the streets blur and shift in and out of focus in the rapidly brightening morning. You come to peace with the knowledge that this version of you wouldn't have been good at a relationship, certainly not one founded on lust and curiosity.





	

iv.

The music is woven through speakers in every wall, deafening, the bass shaking the floor when it drops. People are moving frantically to the pulsing rhythm, punctuating each rise and fall of the sound with a twist of the hips or a press of skin against skin. The air smells like salt - salt from alcohol, sweat, and sex, braided into a perfume tailored to keep people under its lull. You don't need a drink to get drunk at a club, you think. All you need is five minutes alone and a touch of atmosphere.

You came with Jane about three hours ago, but she's since been whisked away on the arm of some gorgeous brunette with jade tattoo sleeves and is probably off somewhere getting the lay of her life. You're excellent at not being bitter, but you do note that you're a better wingman than she is. Now you're lingering in an empty booth with three glasses of water in front of you and your phone in hand, in case you need an out. Usually you're fine around alcohol, although obviously you don't make a point of being near it. Three years sober, but you're smart and you remember what it was like for the first six months. Jake would drop everything and come pick you up if you so much as suggested you were having a hard time, so you've got his number on speed dial.

You stand up and stretch, take a look around. It's nearly one o'clock, which is to say it's rush hour in the club and nobody is planning on leaving anytime soon. You half want to get some yourself, and half just want to go home and drink tea and watch bad movies until Jane stumbles in. You know, logically speaking, that you should be heading home. The only reason you came was to help Jane, and when she comes home she'll have the hangover of her life. But you haven't had sex in two months and you've got a busy few weeks ahead of you, and hell if you aren't in the mood.

You skirt your eyes over the room. The club draws a mélange of people, all ages, races, genders. You're not scrupulous. Most seem engaged, though. You drift nearer the outskirts where single people usually hang, and move through the crowd smoothly. 

You notice a woman braced against the far wall. She's tall and thin as a skeleton, with a mess of white curls spilling over her shoulders; she wears a sharp green blouse with black slacks and a thick silver choker. She leans against the wall casually, her eyes - dark green, forest green - scanning the room with cool disinterest. The lines of her body are sharp and fluid. She nods her head to the music, moving as if acutely aware of her body at all times. Your mouth is very dry.

She notices you moving toward her and catches your gaze. She doesn't seem fazed, but instead runs her eyes up and down your body, evaluating you with thinly veiled enjoyment. The corner of her lip quirks, and then she jerks her chin at you, beckoning. You approach, coming to rest on the wall beside her, and she leans over.

"You look nice," she says. "Your dress is fantastic."

It's a dark purple number that you bought for yourself yesterday. You've never been so glad to have been fiscally irresponsible. 

"Thanks. So do you."

"Don't mean to," she murmurs. "I came for a friend. They're gone, though."

"Me, too. And so's mine." You lift an eyebrow. "Come here often?"

She looks up beneath thick lashes, blinks. "Yes. You?"

"Not really."

"Special occasion?"

"Friend's birthday."

"Ah." She smiles. "You remind me of somebody I used to know."

"Does that line work often?"

"More than you'd think." She looks marginally impressed. 

"If you weren't so hot," you say, "it wouldn't work on me, either." 

She tips her head back and laughs. "Perhaps you're right. Should I prefer the simple approach?"

"With a face like that, you don't need an approach at all."

"Just walk around kissing people, is that it?" She lifts an eyebrow, smirks.

You shrug. "It'd work with me."

She levels her gaze at you and you hold your breath. A faint smile curls around the corner of her lip - then she gives a small nod, leans in, and kisses you.

You lick into her mouth immediately, and her tongue twists around yours, coiling into your mouth and tracing the back of your teeth. You press into her involuntarily, wrap your arms around her neck and tilt her head to get a better angle. Her white hair tangles around your fingers. She presses one hand to your back and flattens your bodies together, using the other to hold the back of your neck steady and play with the baby hairs there. You find yourself fascinated by the play of her tongue against yours and entertain yourself with that for a good while before she breaks away, runs her tongue over your lip thoughtfully, and then tilts her head back just enough to meet your eyes. You're panting and you're not sure if, should she expect you to speak, you'll be able to form a coherent sentence. Her eyes are lidded and her lips are bright red from your attentions, her hair a tad more wild than before, but her composure is impeccable. She whispers her next words into your mouth: "I have an apartment near here."

"Do you?" You're incapable of much more.

"A block down."

"Convenient."

"Tends to be." She licks the shell of your ear and you buck your hips against hers. "Fancy a trip back there?"

"Mmm. Yeah. Yes, that would be. Good." You want to kick yourself in the fucking stomach, but to be fair, her mouth is doing some fucking magnificent things to your neck, and you can't be held responsible for coherency at this point.

"Okay." She nods, laces your fingers in hers. "I'll show you there, then."

You ignore the squirming in your stomach as she pulls you gently to the entrance, guides you out into the cold. Even outdoors you can hear the music; the beat seems to pulse in your core, which twists pleasurably when she shoots you an affectionate look. You almost run the way to her apartment, keeping pace with her long strides - your legs are much shorter than hers - and you're almost tapping your foot in the time it takes her to get out her keys and unlock the door. Her apartment's on the second floor of the building, which means an awkward elevator trip (made much less awkward by the presence of her fingers dancing lower on your back), and a long walk down the hallway to her rooms. But once she's inside, you find yourself pressed against the door with hot breath on your face and it's worth it. 

"Tell me if you want to stop," she murmurs, and then her fingers find your zipper and tug gently, and your dress comes slithering down to your ankles and you reach for her buttons quickly. 

"Okay. You, too," you say quickly, before you lose any semblance of linguistic skill, and then you fumble together into her bedroom. She has the good sense to kick the door shut.

* * *

 

When you wake up, light is streaming through an open window and you find yourself wrapped in an unfamiliar sheet. 

You sit up, wipe phlegm from your eyes, look around the room blearily. The woman's room is decorated artfully, with oaken bookshelves and soft grey wallpaper, a few paintings hung in between shelves. Part of a spotless bathroom is visible through one door; there's an overflowing closet through another. A pair of bay windows open onto a grated balcony to your left, and you rise, wrapping yourself in a blanket, to look through them.

By the light, it's almost seven o'clock, and the streets are already busy. Looking west, you can see the club where she found you, a few people lingering outside it. Everything seems to move slowly, in your exhaustion, and you turn to look at her.

She's sprawled beneath the blankets like something out of a magazine. Her hair spills across the pillow, and the black sheet cuts a sharp asymmetrical line over her pale chest. Her face is smooth and unguarded in sleep, the remnants of last night's makeup smeared around her eyes, and smudges of your black lipstick peppered over her body like ash stains. 

You sit on the bed beside her and watch her eyelids flicker with the last vestiges of REM-sleep. You count the freckles on her cheeks until her eyelashes flutter, and then a slit of green appears beneath them.

"Are you going to stay?" She mumbles it, her throat roughing the words as they emerge.

"Should I?" You don't know if you want to. It's a beautiful apartment. She's a beautiful person. But Jane is probably waiting. You haven't even called her. She doesn't know where you are. You don't even know your lover's name.

"You can," she says, "if you want." Her face presses against the pillow. Shadow traces her profile onto it. "I won't make you leave."

"Do you want me to?"

Her eyes slide up to meet yours. She stills seems only half-awake, and her eyes glint gold in the sun like a snake's. "Doesn't matter. It's your choice."

You look around her room. You identify your bra knotted on the floor, and your underwear, shoved to the foot of the bed. Her undergarments are probably scattered similarly. Your dress is in the living room, you remember, with your purse.

"My friends will be worried about me," you say, finally, looking back to her. She keeps your gaze. Her expression doesn't change. "I have work today."

"All right." She closes her eyes. 

You go around picking up your things. Your bra and underwear go back on your person, despite the smell of sweat and sex. You go into the living room and fetch your dress, wrestle with the zipper behind you for a few minutes, and then do your best to step back into your heels. It's remarkably easy, getting dressed, when you're not hungover. One-night-stands get a lot easier when you're not drunk for them.

You're ready not ten minutes after leaving her bedroom, but you stop at the door and look back. Quickly, you cross to the doorway, and stare in at her; she hasn't moved since you left, still a tangled mess of limbs and beauty in a bed that looks far too big for her.

"I had a great time," you say quickly. The words feel wrong. "Last night was fun for me." You think that's what you're supposed to say, when you're leaving. You're not good at mornings-after. You've never been good at them.

She blinks at you. Her eyes, green-gold, seem to both speak volumes and reveal nothing at all.

"You were - good," you say. "Fantastic. Actually."

Nothing.

"Thank you."

A tiny, almost imperceptible nod, and then her eyes slide closed, and you know she's not listening anymore.

You take a deep breath and leave her apartment. You thank God that her building is mostly empty this time of morning, so nobody sees you in a day-old dress and shoes and smudged makeup. You tried to fix your hair as best you could but it still probably looks like morning-after bedhead. 

It only occurs to you as you're walking down the street, trying to flag a cab, that her apartment outside the bedroom was Spartan in its minimalism - there was a kitchenette, a sofa, a coffee table with two magazines. A dining table, one chair. Nothing else. Nothing laid out, nothing abandoned in the middle of use, nothing to make it feel as though she lived there. It was like a house in a catalogue, intentionally devoid of personal touches, to invite the reader to make their own mark. But you can't remember seeing anything characteristic of her. 

A taxi scoots up to the curb and you grab the door, but instead of getting in, you look up at her balcony. Your sight is still a little blurry from sleep, but you think you can see movement behind the glass doors; a shape, wrapped in black sheets, standing just behind them and looking down at the street. At you, maybe. You aren't sure, and even as you squint the doors reflect the sun back in your eyes, and completely hide anything that might have been behind them. There's no way of knowing, now - whether she's watching you leave. Whether she wanted you there. You don't even know if you want her to want you there. You don't know her.

You get in the cab, then, and call Jane. She's been texting you madly for the past two hours, apologizing profusely for her neglect - not that she actually neglected you - and demanding to know where you were. You tell her your story and enjoy her enormous sigh of relief, demand that later she brief you on her own midnight tryst, and hang up. You're not in the mood for conversation. The woman's eyes linger in the back of your mind.

You know that it was a good decision not to say. You do have work today. Jane was worried. It was casual sex - you both knew that was all it was. You're good at casual sex. From the way she went about things last night, you're sure she is too. You don't do relationships these days, and from her apartment, you're certain she doesn't either.

You're smart enough to know you won't meet her again. No name, no number, no knowledge of anything about her - the chances are astronomical. And you come to peace with that, sitting in the back of a taxi, watching the streets blur and shift in and out of focus in the rapidly brightening morning. You come to peace with the knowledge that this version of you wouldn't have been good at a relationship, certainly not one founded on lust and curiosity. 

But maybe, you think - maybe, somewhere out there, there's a version of you that took a chance. A version of you that waited in the beautiful woman's apartment and learned her name, and learned her habits, and learned how she likes her coffee, and what TV shows she watches, and her passions and her dislikes and how her face looks when she's not trying to hide herself. You hope that somewhere, there's a version of you that stayed.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it wasn't clear, the Calliope portrayed here is a version of the doomed-timeline Calliope who killed Caliborn and predominated, not the one who survived.


End file.
